


Writing Prompts (1)

by Eleint



Category: Original Work
Genre: Corvids, Divination, Exploration, Fantasy, Ficlets, Gen, Haiku, Horror Elements, Nature, Other, Religious Themes, Twitter Fic, fae, first person POV, life - Freeform, small magics, unedited, warnings contained in author notes, writing prompts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-02
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2018-07-19 13:54:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 25
Words: 4,499
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7364020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Eleint/pseuds/Eleint
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short stories and drabbles put together with no rhyme nor reason. They are unconnected works meant as a writing exercise. (under 15 min)</p><p>More tags will be added as necessary, rating may be subject to future change.</p><p>Newest: Twitter ficlets</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Augary

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently I never posted this short writing blurb?

It used to be tea leaves that I read, the little dark specks at the bottom of a cup every morning, tea drained out onto the dish I rested my spoon on. 

I wasn't very good at it, always seeing birds. Just birds. Bird flying, hopping around and minding their own business; circling around some distant point that I could never make out. Which was what I told people when they'd asked. You'd think that I would be able to think up something a little more creative, but they don't ask anymore, so I don't have to worry.

Still, it would be nice to talk to people once in a while, rather than the trees, and the birds. 

Because that's what it meant, you see; the birds. The way they flew. The colors of their feathers. How often the would hop from branch to branch as they sang and chirped throughout the day - it all means something: An owl flying over a house three times meant a death in the family; a swallow dipping down, fortune in a business deal; the dead robin on the porch ... that's just a present from the neighbourhood cat. 

The birds know, they do. Better than you and I, even, though we're the ones who have to live it.


	2. Recover

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The drabble below contains allusions to mental illness

Sometimes, I think I can disappear into myself. Close my eyes and will everything that made me, me away - barely a ripple to mark where I once was.

Those days are few. Fewer now, with the sun, and the leaves poking out of the ground.

Spring is better than any alarm I could ever install. The earth is reborn, and even though I do not fade with the seasons, I feel it too: a newness; and energy.

It's like I can fly.


	3. Instructions

Looking back, the ground has always been stable underneath my feet, but it's a lie. How can anything ever shift when it's all you've known? 

Life becomes a prison, made up of rules, and structure, and the definition of _No_ over and over again, first by others, then by the insidious little voice in your mind. _Don't step on the grass; Stay in the light; Never go out alone;_ until the world itself seems a dark and dangerous place. The daily news doesn't help, with tragedy after tragedy playing on the screens. 

All fueling that sense of growing paranoia that makes it easier to just be; to survive day to day in the same old routine, a repetition of events that's more predictable than the rising sun. 

At least _that_ changes depending on where you go, and when you are. 

People say it's easy, to break that pattern, to wander off into the unknown and try new things, just to take that first step ... 

But I've never been all that brave.


	4. Travel

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Include allusions of past deaths. No details are given.

Yesterday, I went back to the lake.

You know the one,   
with the sheet glass waters burning ice cold against our feet.  
In the summers of our youth,   
we would dip our feet into the waters,  
and laugh at whoever jumped out first. 

Now, the water's green with algae,  
and the racks where we once stood made slippery and treacherous.  
Run-off from farmland and industry stretching their long, inky fingers,  
chocking the life from this wilderness.   
Even the water seems dead.  
Dully lapping up against the shore,  
smelling of old growth and rot.

Sister, when we buried you in the ground,  
I did not think I could smile again.   
And brother, the day I cast your ashes to the sea,  
I forgot what tears were.  
Heart-sick, carefully drawing in the borders of me,  
I walked inwards, away from the world.

But here — at this lake it's like I can breathe again,  
and your voices call to me on the wind;  
stirring the waters:

Green ripples coming ever shoreward.


	5. Tumblr (01) - horror of retail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Imagine the job listing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Not a one word prompt, but inspired by a tumbler post found [here](http://sunkentowers.tumblr.com/post/147024350227/jumpingjacktrash-citizen-zero-tbh-id-love-a).

> Looking for staff for overnight shift. Applicants should be self-directed and able to prioritize tasks for best service to all customers.
> 
> Must have prior experience with cleaning odd and stubborn stains, public speaking, basic troubleshooting for computers and other common electronics, and be able to lift items of up to 25 lbs.
> 
> Other qualities:
> 
>   * knowledge of basic exorcisms
>   * able to use power tools
>   * certification for heavy machinery use
>   * able to speak in tongues
>   * able to adapt to changing situations
> 

> 
> Experience in dealing with other non-humanoid creatures, such as dragons, a bonus. 
> 
> Interested applicants can contact Stephen Lovecraft, at (xxx) xxx-xxxx. All employees will be equipped with the store uniform and basic starter kits in their training sessions. Only those selected for interviews will be contacted.
> 
> *Those who suffer from heart conditions or have high blood pressure need not apply.  
> 


	6. Stardust

Every night, before I go to bed I brush my hair. Just run a comb through it, section by section, stroke by stroke until I reach a count of a hundred. It takes some time, which is why I start before the moon rises so that I can meet the night with my dreams. I got the habit from my grandmother, who had a treasured stiff boar-hair brush, wooden handle long worn down to a shine. She would pull it through her long hair, the iron strands still as thick and glossy as the days of her youth. 

I loved to play with her hair, and whenever we went to her house, I could spend hours sitting and braiding it up into elaborate hairdos. Or well, I was seven; what had been elegant hair styles to me was hours of work to untangle. But she was always tolerant of my activities and eventually taught me what she knew. To catch the sunlight in a twist, or to pin a sweet summer breeze into a victory curl. 

What I remember most of all, was my grandmother's careful hands tugging through her hair, before she went away, the silvery star stuff falling at her feet.


	7. Ghosts

It started with the flickers.

Little shadows from the corner of my eye; sharp edges, the color of a starless night. They never did anything, they were just there, and just as suddenly, gone – until the next time they appeared. I thought my eyes were going, and visited the optometrist a dozen times until we were sure there wasn't anything wrong. Eventually, I got used to it, no longer jumping everything something moved at me. 

That didn't mean it hadn't changed my life though: I stopped driving, relearned the buses and the subway stations that spanned the city. Waking earlier to make up for the extra time, getting bored in the hours back and forth from work, until I remembered to bring a book. (I'd tried knitting, but the yarn tangled something awful.) I avoided dark shadows, walking in the little puddles of streetlight when I made my way home, skin now dark from the sun. 

I liked the warmth. Better than the cold shivers that had grown with those flickers. If I look hard enough, I can make out their expressions. Dead-eyed stares always looking back towards me, mouths gaping soundlessly. As if there was any way I could help them.

I think I'm going to have to move soon. Somewhere far away. Somewhere where the dark and the cold and the faces can't follow. 


	8. List

# Things that fill you with a sense of dread:

• the shadow at the door

• the buzzing drone of a broken radio

• a flicker at the corner of your eye

• 3 am phone calls 

• the creaks and sighs of a settling house

• my mother's voice - calling, calling

• anxiety

• anxiety

• anxiety


	9. Microfiction (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Twitter nonsense

  1. Don't tell me sorry/just go and change what you've done/actions speak louder 
  2. With each new monument, the desert grew; the edges of the city crumbling back into sand.(1/2) "I'm an architect," he'd said. "What else could I do but build?" (2/2) 
  3. Five, seven and five/That's what makes up a haiku/Rhythm and numbers 
  4. help i need someone/to pull the brakes on this train/i want to get off 
  5. The chill of the night/brings with it buried troubles/my heat aches for dawn 
  6. My friend has the steadiest hands of anyone I know, but who do you turn to when the tragedy's over? When the darkness falls? 
  7. "I wish you could sort out my life," she said. The genie retreated - some things magic can't change. 
  8. The lamps were back. All twinkling incandescence, a flow of fire in the dry riverbed, fleeing the night. 
  9. Old boots, tire scraps, empty bottles; it piled up all around her, but it wasn't enough to satisfy the ache when the fish left 
  10. "Save him," they'd cried. "Save him." But it was all in vain, the sun does not listen to what cannot shine. 
  11. Sometimes, you forget and then it's all "I'm not floating off the ground, I just gravitationally challenged!" 
  12. but the storm has past/and you are still standing/pick up your pieces/and go




	10. Lights

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Inspired by [this installation](http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2012/10/new-rural-light-and-book-installations-by-rune-guneriussen/) by Rune Guneriussen
> 
> Expanded from a brief microficlet

Nobody remembers when the lights first came.

The bright, incandescent bulbs bobbed and flowed through the back woods each year, even in my earliest memories. A firefly procession that lit up the woods, transforming what should have been dull, drab dumping grounds into a magical affair of fairy lights and tungsten. 

Folks tried to find where they came from, but lights don't leave tracks, even when they're attached to lamps. And the few who tried to follow them instead... well, they were found confused and muddy the very nest day, so we left them to it. A yearly migration of lamps that go, but never come back. 

But these past few years, I've noticed a change. There has been less of the lamps passing by. (Maybe there had been less _every_ year, but just not enough for anyone to notice.) Anyway, the town has taken to using candles on the firefly nights, lest out own lamps join the long journey, never to return.


	11. Microfiction (2)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Originally on Twitter

  1. When he lost his name, his shadow fled. A patchwork boy coming apart at the seams. What could he do but follow?
  2. The nightingale sang out many keys, but none could free her in a tone deaf world. 
  3. Every voicemail was a warning from the future, but she never listened. 
  4. Elvis at an Elvis impersonator contest: "The King is dead, long live the King."
  5. "If you need me, call my name." Great. But they never introduced themselves before running off to the next crisis. 




	12. Dive (1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This started as a short twitter fic:
>
>>   
>  In these trying times, couch surfing and dumpster diving became popular sports. Anyone could do it.
>> 
>>   It came as no surprise when some combined the two, travelling into the dark depths below the couch cushions.   
> 

It's a whole new world down below, Sadie thought as she swam past old springs and tufts of stuffing, down, down to where the cracker crumbs and old remotes drifted among the currents. If she was lucky, there will be entire goldfish cracker schools, and not just the dust of one, struggling to keep itself together. That's more than enough to make a meal out of.

She swims on, only her headlamp and gathering sack for company. The occasional coin glints from deeper depths, but like many other divers, she'd found the risks of going down to retrieve them to be too much. Accidents have happened: People have disappeared, or had to be fished out, when limbs gave way to the pressures of the deeps. Anderson, the woman who'd taught her to sofa snorkel had been one such person, and she shudders at the memory. 

That blank eyed, doll-like behaviour. The lingering silences... even when Anderson had gotten better, Sadie felt like there was something odd about her eyes. Like something else was there. But that's just her being silly. It's not like any of her other visitors noticed anything, and some of those people were family, or friends who had known Anderson longer. 

Sadie checks her watch, noticing that it's been nearly an hour since she'd come home after work, needing a break, unwilling to brave the throngs of market goers. Time to go, she'll have to make do with what she's already got.


	13. Stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Religious imagery of the Christian/Catholic kind, possible blasphemy

I sit here, at the back of a Saturday sermon for a religion that I don't believe, and all around me are rapt faces of those who want to be here. 

(It's a job. Everyone needs another pair of eyes, sometimes.) 

The preacher speaks on, about light, and love, and living. And asks what about those who don't have Faith? The one who won't believe? Who will show them the way? 

(But I remember other things, of fire, and punishment, and death. Not the dying of the body, that is inevitable, and we can only face our deaths in our own time, but the dying of beyond. Where what makes us _us_ too moves on. That spark of personality, often known as soul. The part of us that gets sent away eternally. )

He says pray. 

But I wonder:  
Do you ever ask where the stars came from? Those burning balls of light, and gas, as much creation as destruction. Ever wonder how the sciences of a natural world can fit within the narrative of a Creator? How stardust and iron runs through each and every one of us, the materials that make up our lives released again in death - into the world. Energy.

Energy that can neither can be created, or destroyed. Just changed. 

Maybe hell is other people, or maybe Hell is the raging fires and reactions in the core of stars. Burning heat and light that eventually goes out — A bang, a whimper, or the endless vacuum of black holes, trapping even light itself. But even light was born of void: _Let there be light,_ they said and the world was illuminated. 

Changed.

The idea soothes me. That even eternal torment can end, when what is eternal isn't anything we can build or imagine. That our world will become unfamiliar and foreign to us all, no matter what we believe. 

(I never turned away from God, but I have to ask who are they?) 

So, do you ever wonder just where do stars come from?

Do you?

Do you?

 

Look to the stars.


	14. Microfiction (3)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More twitter shenanigans

  1. An eye plucked from the head contains all the experiences of the body. That is why ravens are the living memory of the world. 
  2. Know this: The crows remember. No one knows what it is they know. But they watch. And they remember. 
  3. Every sailor knew that a pinch of salt down the gullet was a prayer for safe returns, the only remnant left of a god forgotten 
  4. Another day, another road-side shrine. Flowers and stuffed animals piled together - a beacon for the missing to return. One flick of her pen, and she'd signed away her future. Her ambitions, her dreams; they all belonged to someone else now. You can't regret what isn't yours. 
  5. She sang - and the forests answered, a hundred years of growth flashing by in seconds. Ruins remained, the fires finally quenched. She too had been buried in the roots and leaf litter, as lost as the town that would not stop. It's industries poisoning the land for miles. 
  6. Strand by strand, the spinsters gathered lost hair. Twisting it into the ropes that was used in handfasting. 
  7. I am the lighthouse keeper's daughter, I thought, one last match guttering against my fingers. The light mustn't go out. I still recall my mother's words to me, that first time we stood atop the tower. Me, with my clumsy fingers clutching a matchbox, and mom. Her hands were warm against mine, as I coaxed out the flame, match to whale-fat candles to mirror. I was blinded, awed by the light. Light that led sailors back to shore. "The light mustn't go out," she'd said. And now in the thick of the coldest winter of near 70 years, I don't intend to let it. 
  8. Words were stolen, plucked from the minds of the populace to power the machines. The vox populi screamed. 
  9. We encouraged children to play hide & seek; nothing grew but the flowers that sprung in their wake - a green-gold sea of old 
  10. No one used the office coffeemaker. Each brew tasted so strong, it could wake the dead. Too many owed their lives to the company 
  11. She watched the storm clouds roll in; iron grey flanks heavy with unshed water. Her bucket was ready. The drought will break.




	15. Microfiction (4)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More twitter microficlets, including six word stories

  1. Missing shirt - front lawn art attack 
  2. High speed amusement park rides are the human equivalent of dogs sticking their heads out of the window 
  3. In her heart, she believed: "I'm not like other girls." But a million faces looked back at her, each one a perfect reflection 
  4. When the butterflies swarmed, the town knew that someone else had found freedom. 
  5. For every tree we cut down, three more sprung up in their place. The hydraen forest finally winning the evolutionary race. 
  6. Clockwork was the way of the future, until the batteries ran down and people had to recharge themselves 24/7. We are a people of extension cords. 
  7. Fairy rings were replaced by better techniques: a lure of coin, a splash of wine... smiles filled with unspoken promise.The streets had never been cleaner. But safe? No. Of course not. 
  8. He knew alternate universes existed: each day he woke to new scars from pasts that never happened. 
  9. On the day the world ended, the kitchens had run out of salt. And as anybody knows, a kitchen without salt is a kitchen without soul. So, as the food turned to ashes in our mouths, we consigned everything to the flames and burned with it




	16. Microfiction (5)

• Any omen is an ill one if it reaches the wrong person

• The owl hoots at midnight. Ok. But a hawk's screech at 3 am, and the sparrow's chatter at 5? Bird clocks are a bad idea

• Bedecked with daisy chains, the little girl marched into the forest. No bears or wolves could harm her while they lit her way.


	17. Microfiction (6)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2016 Winter and Holiday edition

• Frosty travelled the globe every year, air currents and cold winds carrying him far and wide. He never had to wait in line for security checks, snowstorms never stop at airports.  


• For your safety, never light candles with fire sprites. They are prone to miss the wick altogether, and house fires are all too common this holiday season.  


• Reindeer games always start after the first lingering snowfall. The town is closed for three days while they compete for titles such as: Brightest nose, highest jump, and perhaps, the most important of all - longest sustained flight. While a well-antlered head is preferred, the occasional male deer who has already lost their antlers make their way into the ranks.  


• Every chime gave her a twinge of unease. Each flash of silver a cause to hide. The Bells. The Bells were coming.


	18. Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Angels are terrifying.

Guardian Angels are not assigned, they are acquired. One person may have many in their lifetime.

The clumsy and the accident prone see them early. 

The needy and the terrified find them quick. 

Pray you never meet them. 

Never feel that skip of heartbeat, that catch of breath, that drag on despair. 

They're Guardians, but life - life isn't necessary.


	19. Microfiction (7)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last update for twitter fic things.

• When Truth came out from her well, we talked louder. And louder. 'How did this happen? Why didn't anyone do something?' We asked too late.

• Bismuth rained down from space, remnants of an age-old war. The final remains of a alien kingdom, now dust. Now forgotten

• Nature took on a more active role: tree roots dragged stones underground, crushing them into new soil, tectonic plates rumbled, continents racing for the edges of the earth. And Time? Time flew faster. 

• Stone giants slumber in our bedrock. They will wake when our world ends: in showers of dirt, through cracks in the foundation Everything shaken down to ruins.

• Ghost children cannot eat, but the memory of sugar is enough to send them bouncing through walls & wailing into the early morning

• Never fear the light, they'd said. But then, they had come; searching and hungry. Eyes caught in the beams glazed over the bodies consumed.

• Bright bubbles rose up from the depths, red and rose and gold. Sailors knew to be careful that night. The glass fish were near. Sharp-edged fines, and fiery cores, they could break a boat in two, as easy as breathing.

• Much knowledge is written on the ocean floor. Twisting fronds dance the passage of time; history written over and over: Atlantis remembered.

• He kept everything wrapped up in books & binders. Scraps tucked into folds of books, stacked neatly. Memories do not linger here, in this mausoleum of words and dust. 

• Stop signs did not stop them, nor did traffic lights. Blurs of speed whipping up storms and hurricanes in their wake. They had no eyes.


	20. Green thumb

She never knew what to do with flowers. 

People would give them to her: park-side daisies, store bought bouquets, even the occasional herb plant which she tries to keep alive, (there's a windowsill in her kitchen devoted to drooping leaves and empty pots, mostly empty pots,) but it was easier to throw them out when the giver stopped looking. After that, it was just a carefully planned game of avoid-the-person until the window to ask after said flowers no longer existed. 

It wasn't as if she was allergic, or had some horrible flower-related memories – she just never saw the point of it.


	21. Haunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Even buildings have souls

I still remember my first day of school after we'd moved to Kingston. It would be the second move of many; my mom, recently divorced, and me, still small and angry at the unfairness in the world. 

I had sat on the front steps, waiting for mom to pick me up, except that she hadn't -- a police officer had, when he'd seen me sitting there alone. 

He'd hurried over. 

"Mica?" he'd asked. When I nodded, he continued "My name is Officer Simcoe, you have a lot of people worried about you. Where have you been?"

At this point, I was getting confused, a rising sense of anxiety making my stomach roil. All I could do was point wordlessly behind me, at the school. Mom had dropped me off here this morning, where else could I have gone? 

Officer Simcoe just shook his head, and pulled out his radio. "This place has been cordoned off for years," he said, before relaying everything to the lady who must have been a dispatcher, though all I heard was the muffled voice of a woman. 

"At least you were careful." He'd sighed. Y"ou can't just go wandering off and do whatever you want to," he finished sternly, motioning me towards the cruiser parked a little ways down the block. 

I didn't get a chance to glance behind me until I'd been seat belted up in the back seat. Where there had been a clean red bricked building this morning, was a worn, neglected wreck. The windows boarded up, and graffiti painted all across the walls. I knew I'd been in class - I'd met the teachers, and some of my classmates, sat through story time and recess. I could still recall the ringing of the bell at the end of the day... 

Anyway, I got grounded for a week after mom met me at the police station. She'd been in tears, saying that she hadn't been able to find me when she'd gone to pick me up. She was full of questions about what I had been thinking. 

No matter how much I tried, I couldn't explain how I'd gotten to the ruined building. No teachers or students had the names I'd listed, though I'd gotten some odd looks from others who had lived in town for years. (They must have recognized them somehow.)  
Eventually, she stopped asking, passing the whole thing off as youthful spirits, as I tried to settle in. 

I know the truth though. I went back to that town It was smaller than I had remembered, and different. A lot of the store fronts had been torn down to make way for more houses, suburban sprawl being eroded away for condos and high rises, the whole town slowly being annexed into the nearby city. I'd found records for the building. There'd been an accident decades ago, people had died. The whole thing had been hushed up, swept under a rug, but the whole place still had to be shut down. 

It made me wonder... how many other buildings are out there? Lonely houses, missing their people? Just hurting, and trying to get through a day, to relive a little bit of their history?


	22. Whoops

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Somebody asked me once:  
>  _why do I write?_

I have too many universes in me,  
not to set them down on paper. 

I would be lost,  
caught and fragmented into a thousand, thousand shards  
all of which could never truly come together.

I write to live,   
in my mind, I have died a hundred times  
and awoke again in myself.


	23. Wake

She blinked, and the sun had risen.  
She blinked, and the world caught fire. 

Dawn groaned; she _hated_ mornings:  
The light of the skyscraper windows were blinding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mornings are gorgeous. But urgh to getting up. 
> 
> Ah ode. (Not really. I would like to apologize for my terrible sense of humour.)


	24. Clean up

The trouble with ghost hunters is that they never think about what happens after they get whatever dramatics they need to entertain their viewers. (Management does, or well, they did, after the first couple of incidents. The show was too popular for it to be spoiled by potential lawsuits, which is where we came in. We're in the budget under miscellaneous expenses.) 

But when the two chumps are done clomping around the old buildings, horsing around for their footage, we step in, making sure they and their crew stir up nothing more than dust. Boring, right? 

More often than not, it is. Sometimes though, you end up apologizing, or having to complete some odd task - and why someone would need a dozen left shoes I couldn't begin to guess - but once in a while it gets violent, nothing the hazard pay doens't cover. 

But really, who wants to know the truth? That ghosts exist, and linger. It's not frightening - it's just sad.


	25. Circular

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Urban fantasy? The blurring of the world boundaries? Something to come back to and play around with definitely.

Their one chance to escape was so close, they could feel the night wind, imagined though it was. Though with pursuit so close behind, Bethany didn't think much of their chances. It was their fault, they should have paid more attention to the signs, and now the fae had sent their hounds after them for magic done on claimed territory. 

"Shana, go," she said, hands on her knees. They'd been out all night, and she was tired. "I'll hold them off" One of them had to make it, and she can't run much longer.

Shana grabbed her arm, her momentum dragging Beth into motion again. "Don't try to be a hero, Beth. You'll die."  
"We're almost there anyway. Come on!"

Beth freed her arm, stepping backwards. "I'll be back. I know I will." 

A flick of her fingers, and the charm was cast - the faint barrier stopped Shana cold - the angry desperation on her face broke her heart. Death is pretty damn final, and they both knew it was inevitable at this point. 

The fae wanted blood. 

"I hate you." Shana's voice cracked. "Remember this."

"It'll have to be the traditional method," Beth joked. "I'll have to be born first, but don't sell off my apart—" 

Hoofbeats.

"GO!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The reason reincarnation happened the first time, is because they didn't know they couldn't.
> 
> After that, well, it's like shutting the barn door after the horses, isn't it?
> 
> * * *
> 
> Likely would've worked better in a script format. Not actually OCs


End file.
